


The Blade of Words

by The_Dark_Enchantress_Ruhi



Series: Harry Potter One Shots [31]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, another 3 + 1, snily angst, there is no bashing as such but snape supporters may not enjoy this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-28 05:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30134481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dark_Enchantress_Ruhi/pseuds/The_Dark_Enchantress_Ruhi
Summary: Three times Severus hurts Lily with his words, (and one when she hurts him with hers).
Relationships: Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter & Lily Evans Potter
Series: Harry Potter One Shots [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566190





	The Blade of Words

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition Season Eight  
> Round : Round 5—Join The Dark Side   
> Team : Puddlemere United  
> Position : Captain  
> Task : Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)—Write about someone who uses their words to hurt people.  
> Word Count : 1488
> 
> A/N : Snape fic. No bashing, but if you like Snape you may not like this. This is from when they are 9 years old to when they are about 14 ish?

**I.**

Muggles are distasteful creatures. Unaware of magic. Unwilling to learn. Unwilling to accept that they are lower than wizards, who are superior in all forms. He thinks Petunia is the textbook definition of Muggles. Small-minded. Stupid. Conceited. His opinions of any Muggle aren't high, but that of Petunia is particularly low. His nine year old self is not very aware of what is right and what is wrong, and what is appropriate and what is not. 

“I wish you would stop listening to her,” he says one fine day, looking at Petunia sitting nearby, but not near enough to over hear them. “She’s a stupid Muggle. Always suspicious and always wanting to get us in trouble.”

Lily doesn't react the way he had though she would. Instead, she frowns. Severus fails to notice this. “I should just send her on that tree branch and then we could play however long we like. She won't even be able to do anything — she’s a muggle.”

“But so am I,” Lily whispers from beside him, hurt lacing her voice. 

“No, I’ve told you you're a witch. You're like me.”

“My parents are Muggles too,” she continues, then pauses. 

“Maybe I don't want to be like you, if this is how you are,” she says, getting up. “Maybe I want to be like Tuny.”

She stalks away, calling, “Tuny!”

* * *

**II.**

The Slytherins are easy to be with. Their ideas are easy to accept, maybe because they are so like his own. Third year Severus Snape finds himself gravitating towards Malfoy and Black and Nott, agreeing with their idea of what the world should be like. Controlled by wizards, with Muggles serving them or hiding. They are so ignorant, so  _ weak,  _ Wizards shouldn't have to hide, it should be the other way round. And they shouldn't have to breed with Muggles either — they are much better off here, with people who understand and know this world; love and accept and want this world. 

Look at his mother and his father. Look at how that git treated him. As if he were some sort of plague. As if he weren't his son. Hit him, cursed at him, took his joy away. Why? Because he was a foolish,  _ foolish  _ Muggle _.  _ Muggles are the disease of this world. They need to go. So do Muggle-borns. 

The thought of Lily comes into his head once, but he waves it away. Lily isn't a part of this — she is much stronger, much more intelligent. She doesn't count. Except when she reminds him that she does.

“Sanders, little git,” he sneers at the small Ravenclaw boy between the circle of the Slytherins. They grin unpleasantly as Malfoy sends a hex after him. If they hadn't been broken up by McGonagall, Severus thinks the boy might have ended up in the lake. 

“Stupid Mudblood,”’ he sneers once McGonagall has taken the boy away. “Needs a teacher to deal with his problems too, the weakling.”

He swipes his eyes around the grounds and finds Lily looking at him from a little away, arms crossed and a frown on her forehead. Marlene is standing beside her with a similar stance. Lily glares at him and shakes her head. 

“I hadn't thought it'd be you too, Sev,” she says as she stalks off. They don't talk until a month later.

* * *

**III. (+ i).**

He can feel his heart sink into his stomach as red hair and Gryffindor robes shove past him, the corner of her book grazing the back of his hand, and Severus knows she has heard them. Heard  _ him _ . He looks back towards the other Slytherins who aren't paying too much mind to him right then, focused on something Avery is saying. He has to go talk to her, has to let her know. It wasn't her they were talking about. She was different.

He slips away from the group and meanders around the stream of students entering the dungeons to attend their next class. Fourth year Gryffindors have Charms next. She’ll be making her way there. His next class is on the other end of the building, but he has to go. He has about fifteen minutes anyway.

She is already inside the open classroom by the time he reaches the Charms corridor, her flaming red hair visible from where she is seated near the front. She is alone, he thinks. Students like to take their time reaching their classrooms when they have time in between them. 

“Lily,” he says, stepping inside, and her head snaps up as she glares at him coldly. 

“Severeus.” He flinches at the iciness in her voice. She only ever calls him by his name when she is angry or hurt. He knows she is both. 

“I didn't mean it. Any of it. Especially not about you—”

Lily cuts him off with a sarcastic laugh, and he thinks he sees her eyes shine for a moment. His heart constricts. 

“ _ Why,  _ Severus?” she practically screams, hand balled into fists by her side, unmistakable fury evident in her voice. “Why not about me? I’m just like them too, aren't I? I’m a Muggle-born too.”

“Lily, no!” he pleads, “you're  _ different _ . You're not like them. They don't have enough magic, they don't know how the Wizarding World works …” he falters, sighing, then closes his eyes. What is he saying? This is not what he was supposed to say.

“You say that only because they are Muggle-borns.” she lets out a long breath. “Is that what you and your friends think about me too, since I am a Muggle-born? No magic? No sense of how the world works? I’m an intruder in this world of yours?”

“No, Lily, I didn't mean — I was being  _ stupid _ , alright, I didn't know what I was saying.”

“You knew  _ exactly  _ what you were saying, Severus. Don't think I didn't hear what you said about Marlene and Agatha.”

His eyes widen. “Lily, I didn't — we were just joking around. It's the sort of thing blokes do!”

“No, Severus, it’s the sort of thing  _ you  _ and your band of future  _ Death Eaters  _ do! I’ve been around other boys. I’ve been around Potter and Black and Lupin and Pettigrew, but they never,  _ never _ said something so horrifying. I used to think they were the worst someone could be, but you … ” she sighs, and Severus hears something very close to a sob. “You’re on the way to proving that you can always be a bigger git than James. You can hate much more than any of them ever could, for something as silly as blood-purity.” 

He starts, opening his mouth to say something but closing it almost immediately. She had compared him to those four, those four whom she knows are his worst enemies. And she had called him worse than them. After everything that they have done to him. After everything she  _ knows  _ they have done to him. 

“He is  _ not  _ better than I! You  _ know  _ what he’s done to me! You  _ know  _ what he’s like, strutting around the place like he owns it —”

“But he’s not a blood-purist,” she says simply, voice quiet and unwavering. It startles him out of the state he is in. Blood-purist. He has never considered himself to be one. He isn't one! He can't be. 

_ ‘Why not?’  _ a voice asks him in his head, sounding like Lily’s.  _ ‘If you can hate all Muggles and Muggle-borns, if you can make vulgar jokes at their expense … what are you, Severus, if not a blood purist? Just waiting to get out of school so that you can join the Dark Lord’s ranks and kill Muggle-borns? Would you kill me too?’ _

“You’re not even denying it,” Lily says softly, looking down at him from her position. There is a single tear rolling down her face. “You called me — us, Marlene and Agatha and I — a  _ Mudblood!”  _ Her gaze bores into his eyes but Severus looks away, finding he can't bear to look at her like this. “ _ Again …  _ after you told me — promised me — you wouldn't do it again.”

Neither speaks for a long moment. Lily slumps in her chair just as a few students start coming in, looking suspiciously at Severus. 

“I think you should go, Severus. We have nothing to talk about.”

His head snaps up again. “No, Lily, wait! I’ll never say it again! I didn't mean it!”

“Just  _ go,  _ Severus. I don't want to go through this again.”

“Lily —”

“She asked you to leave, mate,” a voice calls from the doorway, and Severus scowls at James Potter standing with his entourage, scowling back. 

He looks back at Lily, who is looking at the newcomers with something akin to relief, and swallows. He gives Lily a last pleading look, which she ignores as she opens her book, and shoves past the four still standing in the doorway.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> please review :)


End file.
